Monday, August 23, 2010
Arkansas Politics Comforting the rich
Posted by Max Brantley on Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 6:38 AM
Paul Krugman happens this morning to confront head-on the comfort-the-rich policy espoused in a D-G interview this morning by 2nd District Republican candidate Tim Griffin:
We need to pinch pennies these days. Don’t you know we have a budget deficit? For months that has been the word from Republicans and conservative Democrats, who have rejected every suggestion that we do more to avoid deep cuts in public services and help the ailing economy.But these same politicians are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.
What — you haven’t heard about this proposal? Actually, you have: I’m talking about demands that we make all of the Bush tax cuts, not just those for the middle class, permanent.
Griffin repeats the mantra this is good for "small" busiiness and stimulative. Krugman has him covered:
So, for example, we’re told that it’s all about helping small business; but only a tiny fraction of small-business owners would receive any tax break at all. And how many small-business owners do you know making several million a year?Or we’re told that it’s about helping the economy recover. But it’s hard to think of a less cost-effective way to help the economy than giving money to people who already have plenty, and aren’t likely to spend a windfall.
Comments (10)
Showing 1-10 of 10
Thanks, Max. I was hoping you would do a thread on Krugman's column this morning it is a MUST READ! I appreciated his review, for those with short memories and voters who may have been nine or ten years old in 1991, of the reason the trickle-downers put the 2010 cutoff of their no-tax-for-the-rich legislation: to hide its humongous budget deficit effect:
"Why the cutoff date? In part, it was used to disguise the fiscal irresponsibility of the tax cuts: lopping off that last year reduced the headline cost of the cuts, because such costs are normally calculated over a 10-year period. It also allowed the Bush administration to pass the tax cuts using reconciliation — yes, the same procedure that Republicans denounced when it was used to enact health reform — while sidestepping rules designed to prevent the use of that procedure to increase long-run budget deficits."
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We, the little people, keep being reminded of this over and over and we get it but unfortunately that's not the problem, the rich beneficiaries of the Bush Tax, have closed ignoring minds when it comes to fairness it's just can't breach their addition/need for greed.
It's like any of their addictions the most obvious are those that turn on FOX news every morning to get their daily hate and racism boast.
It is our duty as little people to help the rich get richer. Think of all the jobs busing tables that are created by Stephen's trips to Augusta for the Masters. Think of the starving warlords who depend on us continuing to buy diamonds. Think of the MBAs in Finance whose jobs depend on the rich having income to hide from taxes.
We need to eliminate taxes on the rich and raise taxes on the poor. This formalizes informal policy, is a much more efficient way to transfer wealth, and incents the poor to get rich.
We are quickly approaching 42 million folk on food stamps... towns where HUD shows up to help with housing have 75 percent of all residents show up! 50 million are still without health care with a promise of prices going up a trillion more to save few. There is no plan to employ 20 million in need of a job. There is no plan to help millions of foreclosed homes.
Only cannibalistic rich folk could or would buy all our politicians into silence in times like the last thirty years, much less the last 30 months.
Needless war for oil... oil with hidden costs (war and other subsidies) which is costing about triple the price you see at the pump... with no sincere effort to change our energy ways which would also employ millions right here at home.
NAFTA - no, we don't have -ta! Let's make our own crap plastics and perhaps someday make some quality goods again.
Tax the rich, prosecute fraud for a change... socialize orange jumpsuits for billionaires and corporate officers!
Slap a republican and kick a democrat - make them vote Green today!
Free trade and trickle down are perhaps the two greatest lies of our lifetime.
This is exactly what fueled the great depression. You can't put all of the money in the hands of people who will not spend it. A thriving middle class and working class are fundamental to thriving economy. Our problem is about where we find the 21st century jobs. Consumerism doesn't sell.
What do you mean will not spend it? They spend it like drunken sailors, to the benefit of those of us on the lower scales. They buy the mansions built by carpenters and those day laborers. Thy build boats, built by human hands, who use that wage to feed family and keep home and hearth. Without the filthy rich, you would not have donations, like the Udvar-Hazy addition to the Smithsonian.
That trickle down has worked for centuries, when allowed. Throwing it down the black hole of social spending is how nations die.
Bill Clinton found out the hard way that there are business cycles. YOu can't avoid hiccups in the economy, and th best thing has always been a hands off approach. You'd have thought any serious student of ecnomics and history would have relaizedf that fact after the dismal failure of the New Deal, which stretched a short depression into 11 long years of misery. Only things like the new deal made that possible.
"...cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country."
Krugman reveals that he is truly Socialist or perhaps even Communist in his economic philosophy. No, that's not like throwing around the word "Hitler" or even the ambiguous, really meaningless, term "liberal". [Most] words have meaning. A Socialist believes that people can own things but that the government gets to decide all investment and perhaps all income distribution. A Communist believes no one should even own anything.
When Krugman says the government is "cutting a check" to let someone keep what they have earned he really believe that the government has earned it all and is sending them some of it. This is the ultimate definition of collectivist economics. Krugman writes about the USSR, or at least the UK, but not about America. (Oh wait; he really wants us to be the same.)
"This is exactly what fueled the great depression."
No, the problem is we have a government now consuming over 40% and perhaps this year 50% of GDP. That is what fuels the collapse of economies throughout time.
You're both wrong. Concentrating all the wealth of a country in the hands of a few people is what fuels the collapse of economies.
You have a situation now where the economy is dead because working families have no money, it all having been transferred to people like Alice Walton so she can buy paintings.
Trickle-down economics is basically pissing-down economics. It's a myth. Bush the First was right when he pronounced it voodoo economics.
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